States Focusing on Bottom-Up Approach To Climate Change

The program director for the Center for Climate Strategies says a bottom-up approach can be a successful way for states to individually address climate change.

Speaking on Vermont Edition, Jeff Wennberg, who is also a former commissioner of environmental conservation for Vermont and the former mayor of Rutland told host Jane Lindholm that finding agreement and reaching unanimous consent with widely divergent interests sitting around the table is not an impossible mission.

While Congress and the international
community are stalled on climate change legislation, a number of states and cities are taking matters into
their own hands -- capping greenhouse gas emissions, pursuing renewable energy
and regulating building codes and land use. And Wennberg and Pat Parenteau, a
professor of law at Vermont Law School, said that many such local and regional initiatives are having some success.

Click on the Listen icon to hear Jane's interview with Jeff Wennberg and Pat Parenteau about the successes, the potential and the limits of this bottom-up approach to climate change.